1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer virtualization, that is, to systems and methods for implementing computers as software running on an underlying host hardware platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
The preferred embodiment of the invention is described relative to a virtual memory system for a virtual computer system. Consequently, this description begins with an introduction to virtual computing and virtual memory systems.
Virtualization has brought many advantages to the world of computers. As is well known in the art, a virtual machine (VM) is a software abstraction—a “virtualization”—of an actual physical computer system that runs as a “guest” on an underlying “host” hardware platform. As long as a suitable interface is provided between the VM and the host platform, one advantage is that the operating system (OS) in the guest need not be the same as the OS at the system level in the host. For example, applications that presuppose a Microsoft Windows OS can be run in the VM even though the OS used to handle actual I/O, memory management, etc., on the host might be Linux.
It usually requires less than 10% of the processing capacity of a CPU to run a typical application, although usage may peak briefly for certain operations. Virtualization can more efficiently use processing capacity by allowing more than one VM to run on a single host, effectively multiplying the number of “computers” per “box.” Depending on the implementation, the reduction in performance is negligible, or at least not enough to justify separate, dedicated hardware “boxes” for each user.
Still another advantage is that different VMs can be isolated from and completely transparent to one another. Indeed, the user of a single VM will normally be unaware that he is not using a “real” computer, that is, a system with hardware dedicated exclusively to his use. The existence of the underlying host will also be transparent to the VM software itself. The products of VMware, Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif. provide all of these advantages in that they allow multiple, isolated VMs, which may (but need not) have OSs different from each other's, to run on a common hardware platform.